Notes:

Vietnam surged interest

o Sustained though
Greater in number and longer than expected
Many recent books/articles are critical of standard just war theory
What is just war theory about?
o War
o Moral philosophy (335)
Difference is a matter of focus
What issues/hard questions/specific circumstances is attention
directed
Backwards: what was the theorist reading before she began
writing?
Before just and unjust wars walzer read catholic moral theology and early intl law
More importantly academic and popular military history
o Memoir literature
Preferably lower ranks
o Wartime journalism and commentary
o Novels and poems about experience of fighting and company of soldiers
o Was never a soldier
o Wanted moral arguments to resonate w their authors and people they were about
Many authors are preoccupied w academic lit abt moral philosophy+JWT
o they are reading the journals, not the journalists; they are reading each other
problematic but common
then they argue
ethical issues i.e. self-defense and responsibility (336)
o the think these issues can be worked out removed from war
dont need to read military history
o can be useful
issues can be resolved they just dont ring true to people actually living
war
o wars and battles are like street crimes and marital disputes in civil society; they
involve the same kind of moral dilemmas.
Just need to apply rules of everyday morality
Hypothetical cases work fine in figuring out rules; maybe better
o No reality constraints
Walzer doesnt agree
o Wars and battles are not cases
Dont take place in civil society
Long-standing human practice-radical break in ordinary social activities
(337)
War has its own law and morality
Adaptation of ordinary law+morality
o To understand necessity we need to turn to war itself
What it is and how it has been experienced and how
its rules have ben worked out
 Then we can study particular situations
o Then we can argue for or against
revisions of the rules
Some key arguments will seem strange or incomprehensible unless we begin with the lit
of war itself
strange that JWT judges conduct of war w/o judging character
o what soldiers can/not do doesnt depend on justness of war
what the required independence of the two judgments means is that we
grant soldiers on both sides, whether their cause is just or unjust, an equal
right to fire their guns, so long as they aim only at each other and not at
innocent civilians.
Soldiers in war are moral equals
o Many today are critical of this equality and separation of ad
bellum and in bello justice
Want soldiers to be able to do things in just war that
those in unjust war cant
Works if war is a peacetime activity (338)
Example
o Aggressive war=bank robbery in Philly (peaceful civil society)
Wouldnt judge conduct of robbery independently of the wrongfulness of
robbing banks
Wrongfulness makes a difference
Bank robber and bank guard dont have equal right to shoot
o Guard has rights that the robber doesnt
Just warrior has rights unjust warrior doesnt
o Standard JWT: aggressive war is a crime but not of the soldiers
Polit. And milit. Leaders
Nazi generals, party heads, etc. were indicted not German soldiers
o How can these soldiers be guiltless?
What actually happens in world of war?
o Not like Philly
o What is special/peculiar about war?
1. Circumstances are intensely coercive
in ways not equaled elsewhere
slavery+imprisonment are highly coercive like conscription for
service
o but comparison is greatly exaggerated
coerciveness of battlefield
o life always at risk, soldiers must act in ways that have no
precedent in civilian experience
command decisions are coercive: military necessity (339)
o in heat of battle officers driven to do cruel things
wouldnt do in domestic society
no alternative or alternative=defeat
o subjection or possibly death
for country+citizens
 o to challenge we must understand circumstances that require
it
some legal+moral institution acknowledge/legitimize its
coerciveness
o POW convention
Makes surrender possible
Gives up fighting and captors, whether war was just
or unjust provide him w benevolent quarantine for
the duration of the war
Agreement made under extreme duress
No binding force according to law of
domestic life
We treat it as binding
POWs that escape broke their word and
acted against law of war
o Subject to punishment
Why dont they all do it?
Why do we treat escapees as heroes?
Coerciveness explains POW convention, but doesnt explain why
heroes violate this
2. War is intensely collective and collectivizing
theorists begin with right of individual self-defense (340)
o but individuals are not principally engaged in defending
themselves
part of a collective w great value and a project
which is not just their own
usually a state or milit. org
o recruits, trains, and organizes for a
cause
to establish state or defend
common and individual life
why are individuals willing to risk their lives for these causes?
o If states exist primarily to defend life, then how can life be
sacrificed to defend the state?
Hobbes: no answer
Puts own and many other lives at risk
o Some doubt that this can be justified
Value of individual life may justify violent self-
defense, but no collective has that value
Unconvincing argument
Patriotism and loyalty are misguided but
shouldnt be incomprehensible
o Collectives like state are merely instrumental
They defend collective like community
Very important to its members
o People will risk lives for this
 o All collectivists at some point
Fairly week though
Rarely beats self-interest
o Martyrdom in times of religious persecution is chief
example
Like nation under attack (341)
Danger intensifies collectivism
o Patriotism and loyalty
o Defense of common life trumps self
Why POWs escape
Their cause is critical
o Collectivism intensifies coerciveness
Some fight because they have to, but w
collectiveness they want to
Volunteers, but under social and conscience
pressure
No occupation or community is collectivized like
combatants and non-combatants
Being a member determines if you can be
targeted and killed
o Some soldiers dont deserve to be
targeted, some civilians deserve to be
targeted
Cant make distinction in war
(342)
Individual attentiveness isnt possible
o We fight w soldiers not civilians
o Battles are collective engagements
Hope to survive but aim at a local victory
Only has value as part of a larger scheme
o Value is real to soldiers
Justifies risks they take and
impose on nearby civilians
Context context context
Soldiers would always rather be doing something else
o No equivilant in ordinary life
o Common on both sides
They see themselves in the others
Cant be replicated in hypothetical cases
(343)
3. War is radically and pervasively uncertain
physical and moral uncertainties unmatched in ordinary life
we know what ought to be done or who can tell us what ought to
be done
o moral practice has habitual quality, authority is routinized
in war, morality and authority are radically contested
 still, soldiers can/will be convinced of causes, though anxious
o both sides have same feeling
o no one in the world they can turn to for impartial and
authoritative guidance
uncertainty at highest level
wars end but disagreement doesnt
moral contest outlasts battle
o HISTORY BOOKS
How can anyone fighting unjustly (and aware of it) claim a right to
kill his opponents? (344)
o Rhetorical
Asked by those who insist jus ad bellum determines
jus in bello
Two cant be independent
They must know who has ad bellum justice
o Soldiers have a right to be wrong in context of war
Can oppose as citizens but fight as soldiers
Disciplined army is necessary
o Soldiers have a right to refuse to fight
It is an act of heroism and cant be morally required
Unheroic conduct isnt criminal
Most soldiers believe their war is just
o Battles are fought between soldiers certain of their cause in
a world where all causes are uncertain
Almost all wars are objectively just or unjust
o No agent of this objectivity
No legal or political embodiment
Thus soldiers have the right to fight on
either side, just or unjust
all special features of war produce warrior equality
no domestic equivalent (345)
wartime coerciveness, collectiveness, uncertainty impacts both sides in
roughly equal ways
o in order to constrain soldier conduct, we must recognize this equality
same rights and obligations
no group can claim rights they deny to others or exempt
themselves from everyones obligations
o there would be no constraints at all
moral equality of soldiers is the strangest rule of war
o philosophers who deny its morality miss the force of the rule of war
to understand, one must take interest in moral theory, which explains the
strangeness, but also in war itself, which explains the existence of the rule